Disabling television channels is an important part of the cable television business structure. Within the realm of passive optical networks (PONs), all of the available television channels may be made available by an optical line terminal (OLT) unit. The user premises may have an optical network termination unit (ONT) that receives the television channels subscribed to the user's household premises. Limiting the television channel lineup may be performed at the OLT, the ONT or a combination of both ends of the PON.
One approach to channel access prevention or channel blocking is a brute force approach including, for example, channel tier filtering (i.e., complete tier pass or tier block) and jamming carriers on each specific television (TV) channel. This approach is inflexible regarding individual or discrete channel blocking. Another example may include the ONT (PON customer device) being capable of disabling video channels that are provided via a coaxial output to customer's premises. Ideally, individual television channel control could be performed which provides increased flexibility in the channel line-up provided to a given customer.